


World Enough, And Time

by fairwinds09



Series: Outtakes [1]
Category: Figure Skating RPF, Olympics RPF
Genre: F/M, also in which there are (gasp) sexytimes, consider yourself warned, features loads of kissing and emotional tension, in which they finally have The Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 15:06:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14404665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairwinds09/pseuds/fairwinds09
Summary: A moment hinted at in Hat Trick, in which Scott and Tessa finally discuss what happens after the Olympics are over.Unsurprisingly, there's lots of angst. And kissing. There's actually quite a lot of kissing.(There's also an elevator ride.)





	World Enough, And Time

**Author's Note:**

> There were so many people who commented on the last chapter of Hat Trick with some version of "Oh God, I really want to see this conversation happen, how in the world can you work this in?" that I thought _Screw it, I'm gonna DO this._
> 
> So I did. 
> 
> This little (or not so little) one-shot is set directly after Chapter 7 of Hat Trick, in which, as you may remember, Patrick hands Tessa some home truths and then manages to spill the beans about Scott's plans to propose. Tessa heads off to Scott's room to have it out with him, and that's where this one picks up. 
> 
> Bear in mind that at the beginning of this thing, Scott is still fairly well convinced that T is going to leave him in the dust the second they touch down in Canada, so he's not in the best of all moods. (Don't worry, it'll get better.)
> 
> Also bear in mind that the rating on this is M for a reason. (In other words, if you're running around on here, Miss Tessa, you might want to stop reading right now.)
> 
> For the record, the title is taken from Andrew Marvell's truly excellent poem "To His Coy Mistress," specifically these lines:
> 
> Had we but world enough and time,  
> This coyness, lady, were no crime.  
> We would sit down, and think which way  
> To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
> 
> Finally, thank you all so much for your lovely comments, kudos, etc. on Hat Trick and Outed. I am working on updates for both, but work has just now stopped being hellish, so it will be just a bit. Bear with me. :)
> 
> I put notes about further extended fic ideas at the end. Hope you enjoy!

He doesn’t hear the knock at his door at first.

He’s packing his bag for the shuttle that’s arriving to take them to the arena in - he checks the clock on his nightstand - forty-five minutes. It doesn’t feel like enough time. Nothing in the last couple of days feels like it’s going at the right speed; either moments are flashing by like lightning, too bright and ephemeral to grasp, or he’s swimming through a slow-motion haze, the moments dragging painfully by. (Usually the latter happens when they’re in an interview and _that fucking question_ comes up for the millionth time, but...he doesn’t want to think about that. Not today.)

And now he has forty-four minutes left, and he’s skating with Tessa for the last time on Olympic ice in an hour and a half, and he finds that he can’t take a deep breath anymore. It’s like there’s something pressing in on his lungs, sinking like lead into the pit of his stomach. It’s all ending today, everything he’s known, everything he’s worked for over twenty-one goddamn years, and it’s too _fast_. All of it is passing too fast, like he blinked and years flew by. He knows better...God, he should know better than anyone the amount of work they’ve put in over the slow passage of time, how much they’ve grown and changed, but sometimes he swears he feels like a nine-year-old kid again, taking her hand for the first time.

And _fuck_ , he really shouldn’t have thought of those two tiny kids out on the ice, because now he’s about to tear up again, and he has forty-two minutes left, and it isn’t enough time.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath, trying to wrangle all the emotional mess of the day into a tidy, compartmentalized box, just like Tessa does during interviews and on the ice and practically everywhere else. She’s so damn good at that, shoving all the tangled mess of her feelings down until it’s safe and neat and out of sight, but sometimes it backfires on her. On them. God knows it’s backfiring on him now, shoving clean socks and deodorant into his bag and trying his hardest to not let himself ask things like _what happens next_ and _where do we go from here_ and the worst one, the one that could easily break him where he stands: _do you love me enough to stay_.

Better not to think of that one at all.

In his mind, he goes back to before practice, when he sat in the stands and talked with Chiddy. They’ve been friends for...God, for nearly half his life, and Chiddy’s practically family at this point. (Not family the way Tess is family, but that’s a whole different ball of wax.) More importantly, Chiddy’s been there for the biggest struggles of their partnership - Tessa’s surgeries, their worst fights, all the times they’ve been dating other people, Sochi (fucking _Sochi_ ) and all that came after. Hell, Chiddy’s the one who came and sat with him on the half-finished floor of the house he was remodeling in Ilderton after Sochi was done and dusted. Chiddy, who stayed that whole night, through two bottles of Jack and several beers, who pried the nail gun from his shaking hands before he could hurt himself. (Who listened to the stumbling, drunken confession of _Tessa, it’s only Tessa, it’s always been Tessa_ , and has never once spoken of it again.) Chiddy knows him, knows _them_ , and if he says that Tess isn’t going to leave him, maybe he’s right.

Or maybe this is Sochi all over again, only worse. He finally knows what it’s like to be with her, to love her and have her love him back, knows what it’s like to win more than just the gold. And if that gets ripped away...he doesn’t think he’ll be able to survive that. (There aren’t enough floors or enough bottles of whisky in the world.) If she leaves him now, after all they’ve had in Montreal, he thinks it’ll break something in him that’ll never be put right again.

He’s so deep in his own thoughts that when whoever is at the door bangs on it a second time, more forcefully, he nearly jumps three feet in the air. He goes to open it with considerable reluctance – he’s not really in the mood to talk to anyone right now, not in the mood to reminisce about old times or chat about the gala. He is most certainly not in the mood to talk about what’s happening _after_ everything’s over and they’re headed home.

But he can’t very well ignore whoever it is, so he slowly pulls it open without bothering to look through the peephole, and then…freezes.

It’s Tessa.

Tessa, smiling up at him with that gorgeous, full-on smile that she reserves for the moments she is truly, unabashedly _happy_. Tessa, all decked out in her Canada gear with her bag slung over her shoulder, obviously here to accompany him on the shuttle that’s taking them to their last Olympic skate ever. Tessa, who does not seem at all concerned – doesn’t even seem upset – that they’re closing the door on an enormous part of their lives today and they have absolutely no clue what lies ahead.

Normally she’s his favourite person. Normally he’d be delighted to see her looking this overjoyed. But today, right now, it’s like salt rubbed in an open wound, the sharp initial sting waking a deeper ache. He finds, staring down into her glowing face, that he can hardly bear to look at her right now.  

“Hi,” she says cheerfully, and leans up to plant a kiss on his cheek, despite the still-open door. He checks up and down the hallway, purely out of habit, and pulls in her inside so he can close the door.

“Hi,” he says, and he’s aware that he sounds more than a little flat. She doesn’t seem to notice.

“You ready?” she asks as she follows him into his room. He can’t answer for a moment, struck with how eerily accurate her casual question is. _Are you ready_ , he thinks bitterly. Hell no, he’s not ready. He’s not ready to give this up, to give _her_ up. He’s not ready to watch her walk out of his life, not ready to see the relationship that has become the bedrock of his existence slowly crumble. He’s been trying to prepare himself for it for months (had effectively pushed it out of his head until they won here in Pyeongchang), but he can’t avoid it any longer.

She’s looking at him expectantly, though, with no idea how sour his thoughts have become, and so he tells her, “Yeah, sure,” because he can’t bring himself to dump all of this on her right now. Not right before their last Olympic skate.

To his considerable alarm, she drifts over to his bed, picks up a pair of socks and starts to twist them between her fingers. He frowns a little. Tessa isn’t given to fiddling with things unless she’s nervous. Normally, she’d be tidily re-packing his duffel (so that he suddenly had twice the amount of space available that he had before) or folding the messy pile of clothes stacked haphazardly on his pillow. But she doesn’t fiddle unless something’s wrong.

“So…” she says slowly, not making eye contact. “I wanted to talk to you. Before the gala.”

He knows it’s physically impossible, but he could swear his heart sinks right to the floor. Jesus, but she’s going to do it now. She’s going to have the talk with him, the one where she tells him it’s been fun and she’s enjoyed the past twenty years, but that they need to be realistic about this. That once the bright lights of the media have faded and the world’s attention has moved elsewhere, she has every intention of picking up her life and moving on, of being her beautiful, brilliant self. That she really has no room for him in that picture.

He thinks he’s going to be sick.

“What about?” he manages, although he’s not quite sure how. His heart is pounding so hard in his chest he feels like it’s knocking the breath out of him with every beat. He can feel the tremors starting to run through his body, the deep quivering in his stomach that has come without fail before every single big moment of his life.

She doesn’t look up, just keeps turning his socks over and over in her hands.

“I want to talk about after the Olympics,” she says, and he blindly fumbles for the edge of Chiddy’s bed. He has to sit down. His legs are wobbling under him, and he can’t breathe, and he needs to sit down. Now.

“Right now?” he chokes out, and he sees something shift in her face. As he watches in dumb horror, her lips press together into a tight line, her jaw sets, and she transforms before his eyes into the steely-eyed, fiercely determined version of herself he sees before every skate. A warrior. A competitor.

It’s her game face, and apparently she feels the need to don it now, for this conversation. That cannot mean anything good.

“Yes,” she says, clipped. “Right now. We need to have this out.”

_Have this out_. What a way to phrase it, he thinks humourlessly. That’s it, that’s all he gets, a _let’s have this out_ less than forty minutes before they have to board a shuttle and skate on Olympic ice for the last time. God, he’d at least thought she’d give him some time to process, time to work out the emotions before she forced him to face the world.

All of a sudden, he’s angry. Furious, in fact. He knows, has known for some time, what her reticence about post-Olympic plans is really about. He’s been trying, to the best of his ability, to come to terms with it. But fuck it all, she does _not_ have to do it like this, like it’s this casual, meaningless conversation to be rushed through in less than the amount of time it takes to run a load of laundry. She doesn’t have to throw it away so cavalierly, treat him like an inconvenience to be gotten out of the way. He takes a deep breath in, then another, and relishes the anger thrumming through his veins. Fine. If she wants it like this, she can damn well _have_ it like this.

“All right,” he spits, ignoring the shocked glance she gives him at the change in tone. “You want to have it out? Let’s have it out. What do you want to say?”

Her eyes are wide and a little confused.

“I just…” she starts, and then stops. “I just wanted…just wanted to say that I think I’m ready.”

Fucking hell, but can she be any more obtuse?

“Ready for what?!” he snaps. She colours at the outburst.

“What was _that?_ ” she asks. He glares at her, well aware that he’s breaking every rule of communication they’ve ever gone over in therapy and not really giving a damn.

“ _That_ was me wanting to know what the hell you’re talking about,” he spits, and when he sees her eyes flash, he knows he’s really stepped off in it. They rarely argue, and while they may swear on a regular basis at all manner of things, they almost never swear at each other. He can count the times he’s cursed at her on one hand, and each one was a colossally huge mistake.

(For the record, every time they tell reporters they’ve never said so much as “Shut up” to each other during practice, they’re not lying. Outside of practice is an entirely different story...one that the reporters neither need nor will ever get to hear.)

“Why are you being like this?” she says hotly, cheeks flaming, and she throws his socks into his bag without even looking to see where they fall. He grits his teeth, trying to hold on to the anger, riding out the wave of the hot temper he’s well-known for. (Better the anger than all the other things that lie beneath.)

“Because you’re dancing around the issue, Tess, and I’m damn tired of it!”

He’s a little louder than he intended, and she actually takes a step back, looking at him with widened eyes. Immediately, he feels the sharp stab of guilt, bringing back memory after memory of that look on her face (after her first surgery, after Sochi, after the worst arguments of their lives). He winces.

“Fuck, T, I’m sorry – ” he starts, but she holds up a hand.

“I shouldn’t have come,” she says. It would sound cold, ice-cold, but he knows to look for the tell-tale quiver of her lower lip, and it’s there. Just barely, but it’s there.

“Wait,” he pleads as she turns on her heel to go. Desperate, he pushes up off Chiddy’s bed and grabs her elbow. She tugs against his hold, but he gently reaches for her other arm and turns her around, shamelessly using the years of muscle memory embedded in her body to his advantage.

When he sees her face, his stomach drops. He’s known her for twenty years, and he knows exactly what it looks like when she’s trying not to cry.

“Kiddo,” he whispers, letting go of her arm so he can bring up both hands to cup her face. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Look at me.”

He smooths his thumbs over her cheekbones until she finally looks up. The brilliant green of her eyes is glassy, tears gathering in the corners. Something twists in his stomach.

“I didn’t mean to yell,” he murmurs, repentant. He presses a kiss to her forehead, to the tip of her nose, to the corner of her mouth. “I’m sorry.”

She makes a small noise in her throat, and her hands come up to his chest.

“Why are you so mad?” she says, very quietly. He pulls back enough so that he can see her, lets go of her face so he can cup her shoulders. It’s a stalling tactic, really, because he can’t tell her the truth. Not here, not now. Not when they have to leave in thirty-five minutes.

“I don’t know,” he lies. “I guess I’m just tired, and all the media...it’s relentless, Tess, and I just want to go home.”

Her face softens, and she leans into him.

“I know,” she says gently. “Me too. This has been...everything, everything we ever could have dreamed, but I’m tired too. All I can think of right now is the gala skate, and then going home. Sleeping in my own bed, being in my apartment…”

She trails off, and he can’t help noticing her use of the first-person singular. _My apartment_ , she said, and she’s not wrong. They agreed they’d keep separate places until after the Olympics. He’s beginning to see why.

She’s still upset, though, the corners of her mouth tight the way they are when she’s trying hard to control her emotions, and so he grits his teeth and tries to let it go. Not the time, not now.

“Yeah,” he says, and if his voice is a little rough around the edges, she doesn’t seem to notice. “Home will be good. But now we’ve got the gala skate, and the shuttle will be here soon.”

He leaves it at that, hopes she’ll take the hint and just _go_ , let him wallow in his misery in peace for the thirty-three minutes he has left.

It seems that he will have no such luck.

“We need to talk about this first,” she says, still quiet but determined. He knows the steel in her tone, has heard it for twenty years. She’s not backing down on this.

“Can’t we wait?” he says, and if it sounds like pleading even to his ears, he doesn’t care. He can’t do this right now, not without falling apart or exploding or something even worse. He just can’t.

“No,” she says, and steps away from him. The loss of physical contact chills him, and he almost reaches for her before he manages to stop himself. “No, Scott, it needs to be now.”

She looks up at him, very serious, with the pucker between her eyebrows that she gets when she’s thinking something through.

“I don’t want to step out on Olympic ice for the last time without saying this,” she says, standing ramrod straight. He stares at her, at everything he’s known, the only life he’s really had for the past twenty years, and silently wills her not to go on. He wants to beg with everything he’s got, but he can’t say a damn word, because she apparently needs this and he finds he can’t let her down, not even now when he feels that it may rip him limb from limb.

“Okay,” he croaks out, and if he sounds like a man being handed his own death sentence, well, then, so be it.

She nods once, very seriously, and sits on the corner of his bed. Then, she glances expectantly at him and shifts her gaze to the corner of Chiddy’s bed; he takes the hint and sits down.

“So,” she says, very business-like, and he sets his jaw hard because he’s starting to shake so badly his teeth are about to start rattling. “I’ve been thinking. About when we get home. About where we go from here.”

He nods, unable to find the words. Even if he could, he’s pretty sure they’d come out as a garbled mess right now.

“And I’ve decided…”

She pauses, biting her lower lip, eyes trained on the floor, and he thinks _this is it, this is when it happens._ This is the moment she breaks his heart permanently, irrevocably, because there’s no comeback from this, no golden moment four years later to wipe the taste of misery from his mouth. There’s no redemption here. 

She takes a deep breath, folds her hands in her lap and presses them together so hard her fingertips turn white where they dig into her skin. In some dim corner of his brain that is hardwired to protect her, no matter the cost, he wants to pry her hands apart, rub gently at the marks her fingernails are leaving.

“I’ve decided I want to keep doing this. If you do, I mean. If you want to keep...well, doing... _this_.”

_What?_ It’s the only word his bemused brain can come up with. Keep doing _what?_ Skating? Competing? They’ve all but agreed they’ll retire after this Olympics, but maybe she… He gives up and looks at her like she’s gone crazy.

She flushes and starts to twist her fingers around each other. It’s one of her oldest tells, and something she only does when she’s truly upset. It hurts him to watch.

“Tess,” he manages, although it doesn’t sound particularly intelligible. He tries again, hoping for something that sounds a bit less like a mangled gasp, but she shakes her head.

“Scott,” she says, and his name on her lips makes him ache in a way he didn’t know was possible. “Just let me get this out. Please.”

He nods and stays silent. By this point, he’s mostly just hoping that he won’t cry. Or become violently ill in the wastebasket stashed by the desk.

“I don’t want to lose this,” she says, gesturing awkwardly in the space between them. “I’ve been scared of losing you my whole life, I think, and then I found out what it was really like, being with you...and then I was more scared than ever. Since the comeback - since that damn car wreck - it’s been so good, Scott, every single moment, better than I imagined. We’ve screwed up so much in the past, God knows, but this? This has been...everything.”

She smiles, a little mistily, and he wonders if maybe his head cold has made him develop selective hearing, because nothing she just said makes one damn bit of sense. _I don’t want to lose this? It’s been everything?_ What is the hell is actually going on?

“I know I said we shouldn’t talk about this until after we were done,” she barrels on, looking faintly guilty. “And that was stupid. It was stupid, to think that this could all be put on hold until after we won, _if_ we won. But...it was our bubble. Just us, in the bubble, and I kept thinking that maybe if we could just stay there, not let anything else in, it would last forever. Ridiculous, I know, but still.”

He stares blankly. This is still not making any sense. At all.

“Anyway. I kept telling myself that it wouldn’t work, it _couldn’t_ work, that we’re so different off the ice and we want different things and it wasn’t fair to expect either one of us to give up our dreams for the other, not when we’ve given up so much for each other already. And then - ”

He cuts her off.

“Don’t,” he says, and his voice is a tortured rasp, “just...don’t. Don’t say it. Please.”

She looks stunned.

“But - ” she starts, and he holds up a hand.

“Tessa,” he says, and looks her dead in the eye. “I love you. You know that. But I cannot sit here and listen to you tell me you want to leave.” His voice wobbles and threatens to break. “I just can’t. Just...we’ll consider it said, okay? Because I can’t.”

Now it’s her turn to stare, her mouth slightly open in a shocked sort of ‘o.’

“Leave?” she says finally, in a faint, dazed-sounding voice. “Who wants to leave?”

He wants to scream at her, he really does.

“Do we really have to do this?” he asks, and fuck, it sounds so brutal phrased like that, but he can’t breathe without an enormous weight on his chest and he feels a bit like he needs to lie down and be ill and then drink five bottles of whiskey one after the other. And there’s only...twenty-five minutes left until he has to walk out that door.

He just can’t.

She stands up and looks at him, something like pity in her eyes, and it cuts him down to the bone.

“Why do you think I’m leaving?” she asks, and he turns his head away because it twists something inside him to see her standing there, so fucking beautiful and not his, not really. Never has been, as it turns out.

“You are, aren’t you?” he manages between clenched teeth, and then he feels her hand on his shoulder and every muscle in his body locks down.

“Scott,” she whispers, and then delicate fingers are on his chin, turning his face back towards her, and he’s shaking, shaking, like he’s going to fall to pieces under her pretty hands.

“Don’t,” he manages in a voice that’s shaking horribly. “Tessa…”

And then she leans down and kisses him, her hands coming to cup his face, and he can’t help it. It’s muscle memory now, for years and years, his fingers searching blindly for her hips and his face tilting to hers in a move so natural it’s like breathing.

When she pulls away, his eyes are still shut. He keeps them that way. Foolishly, he thinks for a moment that maybe he can just keep them shut, tight shut for days and weeks and right up until she walks out of his life for good. Pretend to be a little kid again, _you can’t see me if I can’t see you_ , so all the bad things are forced to hide away.

Unsurprisingly, this plan does not work.

“Scott,” she says, chiding. “I’m not leaving. That’s what I’ve been trying to _tell_ you. That I don’t want to leave. I was so scared you wouldn’t want me, for the longest time I’ve been scared of that, but I’m not anymore. I want this. I know _you_ want this. And I want it to work, even if we’re not competing anymore, and I don’t know what that looks like, but I - ”

She stops, because he makes a noise in his throat that even he doesn’t quite recognize.

“Are you okay?” she asks after a moment, sounding worried. He doesn’t say anything, mostly because he’s fairly sure that he’s crossed the line into full-blown auditory hallucinations. Tessa did not just say _I’m not leaving_ and _I was scared you wouldn’t want me_ and _I want this to work_ five seconds ago. None of those things is possible. (Mostly the second one, but...well, all of them, really.)

He’s just cracking up. Which is fine. They’re retiring, he can crack up all he damn well pleases. He actually smiles a little at the thought.

“Hey,” she says sharply, grabbing his shoulders, her nails digging in a little. “You’re making me nervous now. Will you just look at me?”

He debates the likelihood of visual hallucinations as well, and finds the possibility comfortingly remote. If she’s actually standing there, right in front of him, maybe he’s not crazy after all. Very carefully, he cracks one eye open.

Tessa is, in fact, standing directly in front of him, hands still on his shoulders, face caught between irritation and genuine concern.

“What are you doing?” she asks as soon as she can see his lashes flutter. He shrugs, oddly comforted by the weight of her hands on his shoulders.

“I’m confused,” he says, in a shockingly normal tone of voice. _Excellent_ , he thinks. _I’m pulling off crazy very convincingly. Good_.

“You said you weren’t leaving,” he says, in his faux-calm, hiding-the-crazy voice. It’s still working just fine.

Her eyebrows snap together, and she gives him a strange look.

“Yes…” she says, slowly.

“You’re not leaving me,” he repeats, and she looks very worried.

“Yes,” she says. “I mean, no, I'm not. Scott, are you feeling well? You look…” she trails off, because apparently he looks too bad for even her insane vocabulary to summon up appropriate terminology.

“You want this to work,” he says, deliberately, and her hands slide up from his shoulders. She presses one to his forehead, as if she’s checking for fever, and she slides the other into his hair.

“Yeah, I do.”

“What do you mean?’” he asks, and she stills, looking down at him with utter bemusement.

“Hmm?” Her face is still twisted in confusion. “What do you...why are you looking at me like that?”

He reaches up and grabs her hand, hold it tight.

“Because I’m confused,” he says, still in that very odd, faux-calm voice. “You said you didn’t want to leave. That you want this to work. And by _this_ you mean…”

She is beginning to look mildly terrified.

“Us!” she says, as if she thinks that he’s starting to lose his mind. (She is not wrong.) She waves her free hand in the air. “This...whatever it is we’ve been doing for the past year or so. I don’t know what to call it. Dating doesn’t seem right, because it’s a hell of a lot more than that. I haven’t exactly come up with a word-”

She doesn’t get to finish whatever she was going to say, because he surges to his feet, wraps both arms around her, and kisses her. Hard.

Later, he’ll remember it as one of the best kisses of his life - one of those moments when everything he’s thinking and feeling is right there in the press of her mouth to his. Later, he’ll look back and think of the explosion behind his eyelids, the feel of her back under his palms so familiar and sweet that he thinks he might weep from it. Later, he’ll remember this as a first, a moment that defines him and her and both of them, together, a moment when the ground shifts under his feet and everything changes in the best of ways.

Right this second, though, he can’t feel anything but an enormous, sweeping wave of pure relief, the adrenaline rushing through him so fast that he loses his sense of space and ends up holding  her far too tight. He doesn’t realise it until she squeaks in dismay, whereupon he loosens his grip and lets her slide back down to the ground.

(It appears that he got so carried away that she was dangling in his grip several inches in the air, which reminds him vividly of right after he realised they won the Olympics and hauled her into his arms and wouldn’t let go for at least half a minute. This is still better, hands-down.)

She’s blinking up at him, flushed, her mouth a little swollen, and he’s swamped again with how fucking much he _loves_ her. Swiftly, he cups her face and kisses her again, quick, light, just because he can.

“Not that I’m complaining,” she says after a minute, and she sounds a little out of breath, “but are you okay? That was…”

He grins, an enormous Cheshire-cat grin that feels like it stretches from ear to ear.

“Uh-huh,” he says, rather proud of himself. “It absolutely was. So. You’re staying. With me.”

She laughs a little, half under her breath.

“Of course I am,” like it was always a foregone conclusion. Then her lips press together just a little, and she looks up at him like she’s putting two and two together. “Wait. You thought I wasn’t? That’s what all that was about?”

He doesn’t really want to meet her eyes, but he does anyway.

“Yeah,” he admits, and something flashes in her expression that makes the nerves start up again.

“Why?” she asks, setting her teeth as if she’s keeping something in, tamping it down. He hates it when she does that to him. She can do it to everyone else as much as she wants, keep her secrets and hide her thoughts away, but he wants to be one of the few she’s fully honest with, always.

He shrugs, tries to play it off easily. (He’s failing miserably, and he knows it before he even starts.)

“I figured you’d want to go your own way,” he says, and tries not to notice the way her eyes widen, that vulnerable look that says he’s hurt her somehow. “I thought you’d want to travel, do the fashion thing, live abroad maybe. That you didn’t need me tying you down, so...it’d be easier to just call it quits after these Games. I thought that was why you - why you didn’t want to talk about after.”

She looks down, biting her lip, and when she looks back up, there are tears smearing her mascara. (Fuck it all, now he’s made her cry twice in the space of twenty-five minutes. He’s on a roll today.)

“T, talk to me, please,” he says, and God, his voice sounds terrible. He’s barely over his head cold, and the emotional rollercoaster he’s been on for the past hour or so is not helping.

She smiles, but it’s a halfway sort of thing, with bitterness at the edges.

“You really thought that?” she says. “That I’d just leave you in the dust, go find something bigger and better? That’s what you thought?”

He tilts his head back, tries not to sigh. (She hates it when he sighs during an argument, tells him it’s rude and condescending and makes her want to whack him on the back of the head.)

“I didn’t know what to think,” he says evenly. “You wouldn’t talk about after, and I didn’t know why, and I didn’t want to push. I figured...I figured I might as well just enjoy what I had, while I had it.”

To his everlasting surprise, she starts to laugh.

“What the hell is so funny?” he asks, aggrieved, and she just keeps giggling until she’s red in the face.

“Oh, God, we’re idiots,” she says finally, fighting for breath. He raises an eyebrow at her, waiting for some kind of clarification. _Both_ idiots?

“T,” he says, and takes both her shoulders in his hands. “What’s going on?”

She smiles at him, a real smile this time, the same gorgeous glowing expression she gave him when she walked in the door earlier, and against his will he feels himself smiling back at her.

“I thought the same thing,” she says, and reaches up to play with the ends of his hair. (He suspects she knows it relaxes him, and is doing it on purpose. He’s not complaining, though.)

“What same thing?” he says. He fights the urge to kiss her again, because this is a serious conversation and they need to have it right now, not make out like a pair of horny teenagers. She grins and runs her fingers through his hair like when they did Latch, her thumb brushing over the edge of his ear.

“I thought you’d want out after the Games,” she says matter-of-factly, and he suddenly stops feeling like kissing her. She thought _what?_

“Why would you think that?” he barks out, horrified. She lifts one shoulder, elegantly, and lets it drop.

“Probably for the same reasons you thought I would,” she says. “I figured you’d want something quiet - a coaching job in London or Ilderton, a dog, a house with a white picket fence. That you wouldn’t want to stay in Montreal, or Toronto, or wherever I end up. That we want different things out of life, and that it wouldn’t be enough for you to...well. That I wouldn’t be enough.”

He stares at her in stupefied silence. She’s said and done some dumb things in her day - he loves her like he needs air to breathe, but even he will admit that. But this...this is far worse than anything she’s ever said to him before.

“What...the... _hell?_ ” he says after a silence that stretches too long. Her jaw tightens. “Why the _fuck_ would you ever think you’re not enough for me? Tessa…”

She shifts out of his arms, wraps her hands around opposite elbows like she’s suddenly cold.

“I don’t know,” she says, helplessly, and he gets the sense that there’s more to this, something she’s not saying. “I just...I kept telling myself it was too good to last. That nothing this good ever lasts. So...I figured I’d better enjoy it while I could. That’s why I started laughing, because we were both so stupid, and it’s mostly my fault. If we’d just had this out months ago…”

He draws in a deep breath, and then another. There’s more to this, clearly, but he knows her better than just about anyone else on the planet, and he knows that she needs time and space before she’s ready to flay herself open like that, even with him. He’ll be as patient as she needs.

“It’s not your fault,” he says. He hates it when she blames herself for things going wrong; she’s done it since she was a teenager, and he’s fought it tooth and nail every time. “Yeah, we probably should’ve talked about this months ago, but I didn’t exactly push it either. I could’ve said something, and I didn’t. So it’s on both of us.”

He reaches for her, and she doesn’t shy away. Slowly, carefully, he brushes her hair back behind her ear, cups her face with one hand.

“You've always been enough for me,” he says, and it’s ridiculously, absurdly sappy, but right now he absolutely does not give a damn. “You always will be. You remember the gala skate at Nationals?”

Her eyes crinkle as she smiles.

“Yeah,” she says, and she rests one hand on his chest, mirroring their final pose. “You said I was worth the wait. And then got caught on camera in front of the entire country.”

Scott rolls his eyes.

“Never mind that part,” he huffs. “I meant it then, and I meant it just now. I’ve wanted this for half my life, T, even if I didn’t know how to say it back then, or what it really meant. I can’t imagine my life without you, no matter where we go from here. You said you don’t want to step out on Olympic ice for the last time without saying your piece? Well, that’s mine.”

She nods, draws in a shaky breath.

“But what about - ” she starts, and he pulls her into his chest and politely shuts her up with a kiss to the top of her head.

“Nope,” he says firmly, and lets her go when she wriggles. “No what ifs, not right now.” She tilts her head, clearly ready to protest, but he’s not quite finished. “Yeah, I have stuff I want to do. Or that I think I want to do. God knows you have plenty waiting for you, with the fashion stuff and your jewelry line and so forth. But we’ll figure it out as we go, and if push comes to shove, we’ll compromise.

“We’ve been skating together for twenty years, T. For fuck’s sake, we’re two-time Olympic champions. I am pretty damn sure we can figure out where to live and whose lease to cancel and where we’re going to work. We can do this.”

He pauses to take a breath, and she raises one eyebrow. She hates it when he barrels over her during a conversation, and now is apparently no exception.

“Are you finished?” she says after a minute, and that snippy little tone really shouldn’t turn him on as much as it does.

“Yep,” he says, and waits while her other eyebrow joins the first.

“Hmm,” she says noncommittally, and then she steps back and eyes him from head to toe. He’s trying to figure out exactly what she’s up to when she derails his train of thought by wrapping both arms around his neck, pulling his head down, and kissing him for all she’s worth. By the time they break apart for air, he’s half-hard, and, judging from the way she’s pressing up against him, he’s not the only one ready to go.

“Come here,” he mutters, sitting on the bed and gently tugging her down with him. He suddenly wants to see her lying beside him, beneath him, her hair spread out over the pillow...wants to see her looking up at him with boundless trust in her eyes. Wants to imprint the sight on his retinas permanently, so that he can remember that this is his future, that he gets to have this with her every single day of his life. He hasn’t proposed yet, knows that they won’t be there for a while yet, but he already knows he wants to grow old with her.

He wants Tessa Virtue in his bed, smiling up from his pillow, loving him, until the day that he dies.

They tumble down over the bedspread together, kissing like mad, and she’s got her hands under his shirt, while his teeth scrape over her collarbone; when she dips her fingers under his waistband and then brushes them across his abs, teasing, he can’t hold back the groan.

“ _Tessa_ ,” he hisses, tugging at the zipper on her jacket, and she lets her head drop back so that he’ll take the hint and press his open mouth to the pulse point on her neck. “You’re killing me.”

She chuckles, low and raspy, and he can’t take it for another second.

“Come _here_ ,” he repeats, and hauls her into his lap. She wraps both legs around his waist and shifts her weight, wickedly. He groans again, low and long.

“Jesus,” he mutters, fighting with her shirt. “I can’t - ”

She solves his dilemma by grabbing the hem and yanking it over her head, messing up her tidy braid in the process. She tilts backwards in his lap, the sensation making him suck in his breath sharply, and tugs at his shoulders as she slides toward the pillow.

“ _You_ come here,” she orders, bossy as always, and he grins as he slides down to one elbow, slides his hand over the curve of her waist, up her ribcage.

“Yes, ma’am,” he sasses, and she grins and turns her head to nip at his shoulder through the fabric of his T-shirt. He dips his head to run his tongue along the edge of her lacy bra when he feels her stiffen beneath him.

“What?” he says, worried, and lifts his head to see her eyes wide and cheeks pink.

“We can’t do this here,” she says quickly. He wants to point out that they can _absolutely_ do this here, and he’d very much like to continue doing this here, thank you very much. But maybe she has a point.

“You worried Chiddy’s going to walk in?” he asks, and she huffs out a laugh. Neither one of them has been allowed to forget the time Chiddy found out they were sleeping together (they also both rank it as one of the top ten embarrassing moments of their lives).

“No, he’s busy,” she says, cryptically. “But I promised him we wouldn’t...you know, _do_ anything on his bed.”

Scott feels that this seems like a fairly reasonable idea, although he’s not entirely sure when (or why) the subject would’ve come up. His musings are cut short by Tessa scrambling up and unclasping her bra at the same time.

“What…” he starts, but she’s already moving over to his bed, and in an uncharacteristically untidy move, sends her bra flying in the direction of the nightstand. (One of the things he discovered the first time they slept together, over ten years ago, was that she doesn’t give a damn about neatness when she’s in the middle of sex. It fascinates him more than he cares to admit.)

“You have a perfectly good bed,” she says, shoving her leggings down and stepping out of them, and then she’s in nothing but a very sheer pair of lace underwear, and he thinks he’s forgotten how to form words.

“Uh-huh,” he manages dazedly, and she smiles, slow and tempting.

“So, get over here,” she says, one eyebrow challenging him, and then she pulls off the underwear and sits down on the side of his bed primly, ankles neatly crossed.

He practically launches himself across the narrow space between the two beds.

She’s wrapped around him like ivy on oak, has divested him of his shirt and her nimble fingers are working on the button of his jeans when she whispers into his ear, “You know we only have ten minutes, right?”

He pauses from kissing her shoulder for a minute and pretends to think, then slips a hand between her thighs. She gasps and rocks against him, teeth nipping hard at her lower lip.

“Lucky for you, I’ve got lots of practice at this,” he says, cocky, and throws in an eyebrow wiggle for good measure. She throws her head back and laughs, that loud, deep belly laugh that he’s loved for twenty years and counting, and something clenches around his heart.

“Yeah, lucky for me,” she whispers, and then she’s kissing him, sighing against his mouth as he drives her crazy with just his fingers, and in all the haze of sensation, he can’t help thinking that _he’s_ the lucky one.

So damn lucky, to have Tessa Virtue in his arms.

* * *

They are five minutes late for the shuttle, and Tessa is not particularly happy about it. Fortunately, she’s still in a bit of a post-coital daze, so she doesn’t grouse about their tardiness nearly as much as she ordinarily would.

“So,” he says casually as they wait for the elevator, “what exactly made you decide to have this conversation one hour before we had to leave for the gala?”

She at least has the grace to blush.

“Chiddy,” she says, and he swears his jaw drops.

“ _Chiddy?_ ” he exclaims, and immediately his mind snaps to _other_ conversations he’s had with Chiddy within the past year or so. Fucking hell, how much did Chiddy tell her?

“He came by my room earlier and read me the riot act,” she says, a bit shame-faced. “Made me some tea and let me cry on his shoulder, and then when I told him what was going on, he said we should probably actually _talk_ to each other instead of being individually miserable. And that we were good together...whether we were competing or not. Really good.”

She pauses, and the elevator dings. He’s grateful for the interruption, for the chance to get his thoughts in some kind of order. Thank God Chiddy didn’t spill the beans about his plans to propose, although he supposes he should’ve had some faith that his best friend wouldn’t out him like that. He feels a deep sense of gratitude unfurl in his chest, though. If it were anyone else, he’d be pissed at them meddling in his and Tessa’s business, but Chiddy...he’s been there for so much, and he knows them so well. And honestly, he can’t be mad about how this all turned out. God knows how long he and Tessa would’ve stewed over this if left alone, and now…

Now he turns and wraps one arm around her as she steps back from pushing the button for the ground floor, presses his lips to the part of her hair and breathes in strawberries and vanilla. She nestles her head into his shoulder, wraps an arm loosely around his waist.

“I’m glad he’s such a meddling little arse,” he says, and she chuckles.

“Me too,” she murmurs, and then she pushes up to her toes to press a chaste kiss to his cheek. “Glad we’re going to skate here for the last time with all of this settled.”

He pulls her in tighter, a little surprised at how in sync they are. (Although really, when are they not?)

“Yeah,” he agrees, “I was a wreck about it before. Thought for a little while I was gonna end up crying all over the ice.”

She shakes her head, half-smiling, but there’s sympathy in her eyes.

“I figured I’d wait until backstage, but yeah,” she says, and he can’t stop himself from kissing her temple, the corner of her eye.

“We can just bawl our eyes out afterwards,” he suggests. “Maybe at Canada House during the party, that sounds like loads of fun.”

She giggles and steps away, taking his hand as the elevator dings and the doors open.

“We’ll be the life of the party,” she says drily, and she doesn’t let go of his hand as they walk through the lobby to the shuttle, where their driver is waiting with a less-than-pleased expression.

They’re bumping along the road to the arena, hip-to-hip and still holding hands in broad daylight; she’s watching out the window, like she doesn’t want to miss a single moment of this, when he squeezes her hand and waits for her to turn her head.

“You ready?” he says softly, and she smiles, quiet, soft, and closes her eyes for just a minute. When she opens them, he sees nothing in her expression but peace.

“Yeah, I think I am,” she says, and he knows that she means more than just the gala skate. This is it, their future, together, and the thought gives him so much hope that he thinks, like Icarus, he could fly.

“Okay,” he whispers back, and feels his lips curve when she snuggles against his shoulder, utterly content.

For once, it feels like exactly the right time.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about extending the Hat Trick universe ever since I had a conversation with the lovely and ever-so-talented pumpkinpasties several weeks ago. Basically, I kind of want to do what I did with this one-shot - take moments from Hat Trick and explain them further, or present a different POV, or delve into the backstory. Ergo, I wanted to see if y'all were interested in a concept like this. (I mean, if I write them, I'm going to post them anyway, but I kind of wanted to see what the reaction would be ahead of time.)
> 
> So...thoughts? Ideas? Things you'd like to see? I am not promising anything at all in the way of answering prompts, and I have a couple of ideas already in the mix, but I'd love to hear your suggestions. They make such excellent plot bunnies!
> 
> Thank you again - you all are the very best!


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